Multi-Clause Sentences(26) a. The man that we bought the boat from skipped town.
b. The man who(m) we bought the boat from skipped town.
c. The man from whom we bought the boat skipped town.
d. The man whose boat we bought skipped town.
e. The man 0 we bought the boat from skipped town.
We want you to notice a number of features of these clauses. First, the
finite RCs can be introduced by that (26a), a wh-word (26b), a phrase con-
taining a wh-word (26c,d), or no introducer ( 0 ) at all (26e).
Second, each of the relative clauses has a “gap,” a position, which if the
clause were rephrased as a complete sentence, would have to be filled. In the
sentences in (27), we indicate the gap as e. In (27a) the part of the NP that
is modified by the RC, the man, is interpreted as the subject of the RC, so
the gap is in the RC subject position. In (27b) the part of the NP modified
by the RC, the boat, is interpreted as the direct object of the RC, so that the
gap is in the RC DO position; in (27c, d) the part of the NP modified by
the RC, the man, is interpreted as the object of a preposition in the RC, so
the gap occurs after the preposition in each case. This claim is supported
by the fact that the preposition is not followed immediately by its object,
indicating that the gap is the OP position.
(27) a. The man that/who e sold us the boat skipped town. [Subject]
b. The boat that/which/ 0 the man sold us e broke down. [Direct
object]
c. The man that/who/ 0 we sold the boat to e is very upset.
[Object of preposition]
d. The man that/who/ 0 we bought the boat from e skipped
town. [Object of preposition]Third, the wh-word is interpreted as coreferential with (i.e., referring
to the same entity as) the head noun and any other modifiers of the NP
that contains the RC. If we were to rephrase the relative clauses in (27) as
independent sentences, we would replace the relative pronouns (where they
occur) with the head noun and any modifiers, giving us:
(28) a. The man sold us the boat.
b. The man sold us the boat.
c. We sold the boat to the man.
d. We bought the boat from the man.